Credit Card Fraud training a hit

Consumer Action’s team held a pilot pre-training session on the Credit Card Fraud module, which was created by Consumer Action in partnership with Washington Mutual (WaMu). This pre-training session was designed for WaMu staff to review the educational materials, model how the training should be facilitated and discuss best practices in teaching adults and developing outreach strategies for hard to reach audiences. While covering outreach techniques, the training also provided an overview of cultural competency tips, language barriers and ways to present the material in a succinct fashion and tailor it to the needs of specific audiences. Afterwards, community-based organizations from the area joined the training. Participants were attentive and excited about the information and expressed interest in Identity Theft and Senior Fraud issues. Representing a wide variety of agencies serving a diverse immigrant population, attendees shared stories on how immigrants were often fooled or scammed by con artists or dishonest telemarketers taking advantage of language barriers. Attendees from WaMu offered to facilitate future trainings with community-based organizations in Spanish, Chinese and possibly other languages. Participants stood in line to thank Consumer Action’s training team and to provide positive feedback on our unique training model. Attendees told the staff that community-based organizations usually can’t attend trainings because of the lack of funding. Consumer Action’s services are always free to community-based organizations and non-profit agencies.